1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a document processing apparatus and a method for controlling a document processing apparatus for processing documents with print settings.
2. Description of the Related Art
According to publicly announced plans, XPS (XML Paper Specification), an XML-based document format, will be supported in Windows Vista™, a product of Microsoft Corporation (“XML Paper Specification Version 0.9”, May 18, 2006, Microsoft Corporation [search results as of Jul. 25, 2006], <URL:http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/xpsspecdwn.mspx(XPS—09. doc)> (called “XML Paper Specification”)). An XPS document is a document composed of three hierarchical levels called FixedDocumentSequence/FixedDocument/FixedPage, as shown in FIG. 18. FixedDocumentSequence, FixedDocument, and FixedPage correspond to nodes in the respective hierarchical levels, with the XPS document having a tree structure made up of these nodes. FixedDocumentSequence describes a FixedDocument sequence. FixedDocument describes a sequence of FixedPages. FixedPage comprises page contents. XML documents containing print attributes, called print tickets, can be associated with the nodes of the respective hierarchical levels (“Print Ticket and Print Capabilities Support in Windows Print Drivers”, Feb. 6, 2006, Microsoft Corporation [search results as of Jul. 25, 2006]<URL: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/print/XPSDrv_Print Ticket.mspx (XPSDrv_PrintTicket.doc)>(called “Print Ticket”)). It should be noted that print attributes are sometimes referred to as print settings. As shown in the example illustrated in FIG. 18, a job-level print ticket 1804 is associated with FixedDocumentSequence. In addition, a document-level print ticket 1805 is associated with FixedDocument1. Moreover, a page-level print ticket 1806 is associated with FixedPage1. The ability to specify print tickets for each node of each hierarchical level makes it possible to change the output paper size for each FixedPage of an XPS document, as well as change the way each FixedDocument is stapled. It should be noted that a job-level print ticket is a print ticket associated with FixedDocumentSequence. A document-level print ticket is a print ticket associated with a FixedDocument. A page-level print ticket is a print ticket associated with a FixedPage.
As mentioned in “XML Paper Specification”, one aspect of such an XPS document is that it can double up as a print spooler format during printing, and another is that it can be used as an ordinary document. Regarding the document aspect, an XPS document, in the same manner as an Adobe PDF file, can be used as a document format for the purpose of public disclosure and dissemination of various documents. As described above, in an XPS document, each node of the hierarchical levels can hold a print ticket, and, as a result, by virtue of the fact that the print tickets contain print settings, it is possible to create and distribute XPS documents associated with print settings.
In addition, in the so-called print-on-demand (POD) market, which involves printing on an “as-required” basis, as well as in the field of high-end business printer drivers and hot folders, it is desirable to specify print attribute settings for each page in addition to print attribute settings for the job as a whole. For instance, in certain cases, when creating a document made up of multiple sections, it may be desirable to use colored paper for the first pages of the sections and white paper for the rest of the pages. In such cases, the entire job is configured to use white paper and only the first pages of each section have a print attribute setting that specifies colored paper, that is, different from the print attribute settings for the job as a whole. In other cases, it might be preferable for the configuration of other settings, for example, paper size, simplex/duplex, post-print finishing, color settings, etc. for a specific page or range of pages to be different from the print attribute settings of the job as a whole. It should be noted that, as used in the present embodiment, the term “hot folder” refers to a folder associated with print settings. Because print settings associated with a hot folder are provided in document files saved in the hot folder, there is no need to reconfigure print settings for documents saved in the hot folder.
When different print attribute settings are configured for each page in such a printer driver or hot folder, a property panel or a dialog used to configure page exceptions is opened in order to specify a page or a page range and create a partition. In many cases print attributes can be further configured for the partition through a lower-level dialog (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-110638 or Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-250606).
According to Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-110638, a functional module for section-level setup is provided in a printer driver in order to permit different print attribute settings for different sections by saving them as section setup information files. Moreover, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-250606 proposes a method for advance determination of exception print conditions that constitute exceptions to the basic setup conditions. For instance, let us suppose that the exception setup condition is A3 paper size, the print condition is “one-up” printing, and the basic setup conditions are A4 and “two-up”. If the document to be printed is made up of 5 pages consecutively sized A4, A4, A3, A4, and A4, then the first and second pages are A4-sized and therefore match the basic setup conditions. For this reason, these two pages are printed two-up. In addition, the third page is A3-sized and corresponds to the exception setup condition. For this reason, the third page is printed one-up. The fourth and fifth pages match the basic setup conditions, too, and are printed two-up. It should be noted that the expression “n-up” refers to a print setting used when printing n pages of a target document on one side of a sheet using reduced scale layout. N-up printing is sometimes called “reduced scale layout”.
Furthermore, the method adopted in postscript printer drivers from Xerox Corporation and in postscript printer drivers from Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG requires that the user, first of all, configure exception settings for pages or page ranges and create partitions. Next, exception settings are configured for the partitions using other print attribute setup panels or dialogs.
In the above-described background technology, an XPS document with print attributes may be distributed by the author of the document among multiple users. In such a case, if the application used to create the XPS document is unavailable for the users who receive the XPS document, the users will display and print it using a simple viewer or the like distributed free of charge, which will allow them to read and print the XPS document. Such a simple viewer has limited functionality and it is believed that in many cases it will not support displaying and modifying print attributes for each page contained in the hierarchical structure of the XPS document. Checking and modifying print attributes for each page on screen is not feasible when displaying a distributed XPS document using such a simple viewer. For instance, even though the author of the XPS document may use a large output paper size for a particular page, all the paper sizes in the XPS document will appear identical in the simple viewer. The reason for this is that document print attributes are given priority and, at the same time, the print attributes of pages, that is, a lower hierarchical level, cannot be understood when using such a simple viewer. However, when the document is printed, page print tickets are sent to the printer driver as well, which is why paper media of larger sizes will be used for specific pages for printing in accordance with the print settings of individual pages. Thus, the problem is that output obtained as a result of actual printing cannot be confirmed in the preview display window. Moreover, another problem is that it is impossible to confirm and modify print settings on a page-by-page basis.
Furthermore, in order to display and edit the print attributes of each node at each hierarchical level of an XPS document in the user interface window for exception setup, the program used to edit the XPS document needs to identify exception settings incorporated in the XPS document. For instance, the editing application will be able to identify exception settings by comparing the print attributes of each FixedPage contained in an XPS document. When there is a wide variety of setup features used for print attributes in an XPS document and, furthermore, when there are a large number of FixedPages in the document, comparing the print attributes of all the nodes will require a large amount of time. Therefore, the problem is that a lot of time will be necessary to display them on the user interface and no increase in operability or productivity will be achieved.
Moreover, because the editing application is launched by the user and the XPS file can be read, as described above, it is possible to display print settings in the UI on a page-by-page basis. However, the user interface of a conventional printer driver is called by the operating system in order to configure print settings and it cannot read an XPS file, which is managed by the application acting as the printing source. For this reason, a conventional printer driver cannot be aware of the print attributes set on a page-by-page basis and ends up displaying a print setup UI with default settings. Therefore, it is believed that the user will face the problem of being unaware of the fact that print attributes have been predefined on a page-by-page basis in the XPS document.